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Iceland’s Captain Ahab runs ships on whale oil

Whalers cut open a 35-ton fin whale off the coast of Iceland (Halldor Kolbeins)

AN ICELANDIC entrepreneur has created a new “biofuel” using whale oil — which
he then uses to power his whale-hunting ships.

Kristjan Loftsson, who runs a business catching fin whales around Iceland,
claims his biofuel, a mixture of 20% whale oil and 80% diesel, is the
world’s greenest.

Loftsson says the oil is doubly environmentally friendly because he uses
geothermal energy from Iceland’s volcanic vents to melt the whale carcasses
to extract the oil.

However, a leading whale conservation group described the practice as
“completely perverse and unethical”. Loftsson says each boat burns the
equivalent of one whale a day during the hunting season, saving hundreds of
thousands of pounds a year.

Fin whales are classed as “endangered” — at very high risk of extinction — by
the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Past hunting of the
40-ton creatures nearly wiped them out.